iRobot’s Ava 500 telepresence bot will change the meaning of ‘phoning it in’

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It’s the quintessential First World Problem: You’ve got to get on a plane and fly first class around the world, just to sit in an elegant board room for two hours and not say much while corporate big-wigs frown at charts. How can we leverage human ingenuity to stamp out this scourge? We can make a robot to take the meetings for us.

Despite its shameless borrowing of names from Asimov, Roomba manufacturer iRobot is constantly at the forefront of real, science fiction-style robot design. Their work has produced products that have led to stubbed toes and UN crisis reports, that represent a first step toward everything from Rosie the housekeeper to the killer gun-thing from Robocop. Their products are in the houses of the average citizen and the toy-closet of certain police stations. Now, they’re looking to add the world’s great corporate offices to that list of conquered territories.

Combine a real personality with the user experience of Caprica’s Serge, and you’ve got Ava 500.

The Ava 500 is a “telepresence” robot that acts as an autonomous surrogate for people who can’t (or won’t) come in to the office. Its design evokes the helper robot from Caprica, though the functionality was predicted long before that. The idea is simple: create a robot that totally erases the deficit in ability and experience that has always gone hand in hand with attending a meeting by video. It’s become a part of the modern English lexicon: Ava 500 is a real attempt to change the meaning of the phrase “phoning it in.”

Ava has a number of features designed to make those who actually are at the office forget that you are sitting comfortably as home. It is fully autonomous and will navigate a mapped space as necessary, meaning that it will probably be more punctual than the person for whom it’s standing in. Full 360 degree movement means it doesn’t do the classical tank-moving that makes small adjustments in position seem so artificial and awkward. It can adjust its height to match a standing or sitting position, turn to maintain “eye contact” with speakers. When the meeting is done, it will automatically return to its charging station.

Ava is actually a collaboration between iRobot hardware and navigation and Cisco telecommunications software. It uses multiple forms of spatial sensing and 3D navigation to move fluidly and safely through an environment with unpredictable human obstacles.

If adopted on the large scale, Ava 500 and its successor units could bring the costs of global business down dramatically — at least on the executive scale. But these robots will never be used for call centers, or engineering farms, or any of the things that actually represent a sizable fraction of the work that’s going abroad. So, really, how much do we need a robot that saves a few hundred executives a few dozen hours of travel?